Blackpool Tomatoes

Back in the day, grocery shops were proud to sell “Blackpool Tomatoes” and “Fylde Tomatoes”.

Fylde tomatoes are not an urban myth.  Miles of market gardens grow rosy red, tasty beauties on the rich soils of the Fylde.  They’re still going strong.

I’ve grown an assortment of Fylde tomatoes this year.  Well, they were grown on the Fylde, but not in that rich, peaty soil that makes them so special.  They’ve been exceptional.  A bumper crop, oozing a wonderful, earthy, tomatoey smell that you don’t ever get from a packet of shop-bought.

Plum tomatoes

It’s been a tidy-the-garden-day and the last of those summery tomatoes have been plucked from their wizened stems for a final batch of homemade tomato soup.  A little bit of summer now captured in the freezer.

Roast in oven with garlic

Grill until skin blackens

 

Very easy recipe for tomato and red pepper soup

Roast tomatoes in oven with garlic, fresh thyme, fresh basil, drizzled with olive oil
Grill peppers, turning until skin blackens
Pop peppers in bowl covered with clingfilm:  leave to cool

Peppers in bowl covered with clingfilm

Remove skin and seeds from peppers (a bit messy) – make sure to keep the juices
Whizz tomatoes and peppers in a whizzing machine
Push through sieve to remove tomato pips/skin
Hey presto!
Tomato and red pepper soup
(Beats the tinned stuff any day!)

 

 

March of the Mouldies

 

Plastic Army

Once neatly packaged in twos and threes with a bucket and spade in a string bag, the Mouldies were free. 

Their lives had been diverse.  Loved one minute, rejected the next, chewed by the dog, washed away with the tide, returned to another place. 

Bea Pool, an obsessive collector of beach treasures, rescued Mouldies. She had a knack of spotting colourful shapes hiding under clumps of seaweed, or half-buried in soft, silvery sand.  Her ever-growing assortment lived in a bucket in the garden shed.  Bea would do something with them one day.  Maybe make a mobile, hang them in the lilac tree, glitter-spray them as Christmas tree decorations. 

Today, there was an inkling of spring in the air.  Daffodils and tulips bobbed their heads in the breeze.  Excited blue tits were ecstatic to find the nest box on the garden wall still available.  Bees buzzed in glee at the weak warmth of the first sunny day in ages. 

Pottering in the garden shed Bea looked down at the bucketful of Mouldies.  She felt sorry for them, and had an urge to return them to the beach.  Once liberated, they might have a new life.  Little people playing in the sand, with their families close by, might adopt the Mouldies to make intricate sand patterns (even though Mouldies were pretty useless at moulding sand, according to Bea’s disappointing efforts).  

It was worth the gamble.  Bea pedalled down to the beach with the Mouldies shuffling around in her rucksack.  She released them. 

The Mouldies were overjoyed.  They had the freedom of the beach.  In the distance the King and Queen of Spades and their courtiers were waiting to welcome them. 

 

King & Queen of Spades & Courtiers

The March of the Mouldies set forth.  The happy gathering posed for Bea.  

Mouldies together

Bea took pics of her plastic friends so she’d remember.  The time had come to leave them to their fate.  But she couldn’t.  She scooped them up, shoved them into her rucksack and took them back to the garden shed.

Back in the bucket, that’s where they’d stay … … … until the next instalment.